The Best Author's
by JohnsonLee | created - 25 Mar 2013 | updated - 25 Mar 2013 | Public
1. Stephen King
Writer | Maximum Overdrive
Stephen Edwin King was born on September 21, 1947, at the Maine General Hospital in Portland. His parents were Nellie Ruth (Pillsbury), who worked as a caregiver at a mental institute, and Donald Edwin King, a merchant seaman. His father was born under the surname "Pollock," but used the last name ...
2. Clive Barker
Writer | Nightbreed
Born in Liverpool, England, UK, Clive Barker is an English writer, director, and visual artist, best known for his works in the genres of horror and dark fantasy. His mother Joan Ruby (née Revill) was a painter and school welfare officer and his father Leonard Barker was a personnel director for an...
3. William Shakespeare
Writer | The Tragedy of Macbeth
William Shakespeare's birthdate is assumed from his baptism on April 25. His father John was the son of a farmer who became a successful tradesman; his mother Mary Arden was gentry. He studied Latin works at Stratford Grammar School, leaving at about age 15. About this time his father suffered an ...
4. C.S. Lewis
Writer | The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
C.S. Lewis was born in 1898 and brought up in a very strict, religious household. While he was quite young, his mother died of cancer but the "stiff upper lip" in favour at the time meant he wasn't allowed to grieve. He became an Oxford don and led a sheltered life. He seriously questioned his ...
5. Lewis Carroll
Writer | Alice in Wonderland
Lewis Carroll was the pen name of Charles L. Dodgson, author of the children's classics "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking-Glass."
Born on January 27, 1832 in Daresbury, Cheshire, England, Charles Dodgson wrote and created games as a child. At age 20 he received a ...
6. Bram Stoker
Writer | Dracula
Bram Stoker was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1847, and gained fame for his novel "Dracula" about an aristocratic vampire in Transylvania. The sequel, "Dracula's Guest," was not published for 17 years after the publication of "Dracula," two years after Stoker's death. Stoker also wrote "The Mystery ...
7. Mary Shelley
Writer | Young Frankenstein
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (née Godwin; 30 August 1797 - 1 February 1851) was an English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel "Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus" (1818). She also edited and promoted the works of her...
8. J.R.R. Tolkien
Writer | The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
English writer, scholar and philologist, Tolkien's father was a bank manager in South Africa. Shortly before his father died (1896) his mother took him and his younger brother to his father's native village of Sarehole, near Birmingham, England. The landscapes and Nordic mythology of the Midlands ...
9. J.K. Rowling
Writer | Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2
Joanne Rowling was born in Yate, near Bristol, a few miles south of a town called Dursley ("Harry Potter"'s Muggle-family). Her father Peter Rowling was an engineer for Rolls Royce in Bristol at this time. Her mother, Anne, was half-French and half-Scottish. They met on a train as it left King's ...
10. L. Frank Baum
Writer | The Wizard of Oz
L. Frank Baum became a success with his 1883 production of "The Maid of Arran" in 1882. He was a dreamer, had a printing press and an amateur newspaper, "The Rose Lawn Home Journal" and published a coin and stamp collecting guide. He failed at almost everything through poor business sense. He had ...
11. Mark Twain
Writer | Big River
Mark Twain, born Samuel Langhorne Clemens in Florida, Missouri in 1835, grew up in Hannibal. He was a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River. Throughout his career, Twain served as a writer, lecturer, reporter, editor, printer, and prospector. Twain took his pen name from an alert cry used on his...
12. Charles Dickens
Writer | Great Expectations
Charles Dickens' father was a clerk at the Naval Pay Office, and because of this the family had to move from place to place: Plymouth, London, Chatham. It was a large family and despite hard work, his father couldn't earn enough money. In 1823 he was arrested for debt and Charles had to start ...
13. Michael Crichton
Writer | Jurassic Park
Michael Crichton was born in Chicago, Illinois, but grew up in Roslyn, New York. His father was a journalist and encouraged him to write and to type. Michael gave up studying English at Harvard University, having become disillusioned with the teaching standards--the final straw came when he ...
14. Alexandre Dumas
Writer | The Count of Monte Cristo
His paternal grandparents were Marie Cessete Dumas (a Haitian slave) and Marquis Antoine Davy de la Pailleterie. Antoine disapproved of their son, Thomas-Alexandre, joining the French army under the "Davy de la Pailleterie" name, so Thomas-Alexandre used his mother's surname instead. He became a ...
15. Edgar Allan Poe
Writer | Stonehearst Asylum
Edgar Allan Poe was born on January 19, 1809, in Boston, Massachusetts. His father, named David Poe Jr., and his mother, named Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins Poe, were touring actors. Both parents died in 1811, and Poe became an orphan before he was 3 years old. He was adopted by John Allan, a tobacco ...
16. H.G. Wells
Writer | The War of the Worlds
Writer, born in Bromley, Kent. He was apprenticed to a draper, tried teaching, studied biology in London, then made his mark in journalism and literature. He played a vital part in disseminating the progressive ideas which characterized the first part of the 20th-c. He achieved fame with scientific...
17. Herman Melville
Writer | The Enigma of Benito Cereno
Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period. Among his best-known works are Moby-Dick (1851); Typee (1846), a romanticized account of his experiences in Polynesia; and Billy Budd, Sailor, a posthumously published novella. Although his ...
18. Nathaniel Hawthorne
Writer | Graves and Goblins
Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist, dark romantic, and short story writer. His works often focus on history, morality, and religion. He was born in 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts, from a family long associated with that town. Hawthorne entered Bowdoin College in 1821, was elected to Phi ...
19. Jules Verne
Writer | 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
Jules Gabriel Verne (1828-1905) was one of the most famous French novelists of all time. His major work is the "Extraordinary Journeys", a series of more than sixty adventure novels including "Journey to the Center of the Earth", "Around the World in 80 Days", "20.000 Leagues under the Seas" and "...
20. J.M. Barrie
Writer | Peter Pan
James Matthew "J. M." Barrie was a Scottish novelist and playwright. He had a distinguished career, but is primarily remembered for creating Peter Pan and his supporting characters. He used the character of Pan in the novel "The Little White Bird" (1902), the stage play "Peter Pan, or The Boy Who ...
21. Robert Louis Stevenson
Writer | Muppet Treasure Island
Robert Louis Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, and travel writer from Edinburgh. His most popular works include the pirate-themed adventure novel "Treasure Island" (1883), the poetry collection "A Child's Garden of Verses" (1885), the Gothic horror novella "Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr ...
22. Anna Sewell
Writer | Black Beauty
Anna Sewell was born on March 20, 1820 in Yarmouth, Norfolk, England, UK. She was a writer, known for Black Beauty (1994), Black Beauty (1933) and Your Obedient Servant (1917). She died on April 25, 1878 in Old Catton, Norfolk, England, UK.
23. Douglas Adams
Writer | The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Born Douglas Noel Adams on March 11, 1952 in Cambridge. From 1959 until 1970 he went to Brentwood school in Essex, and his main interest was science. As a student in Cambridge he decided to hitch-hike through Europe to Istanbul, and in order to raise funds for this he took a lot of small jobs. In ...
24. Arthur Conan Doyle
Writer | Sherlock Holmes
Arthur Conan Doyle was a British writer of Irish descent, considered a major figure in crime fiction. His most famous series of works consisted of the "Sherlock Holmes" stories (1887-1927), consisting of four novels and 56 short stories. His other notable series were the "Professor Challenger" ...
25. Homer
Writer | Troy
Homer is the name traditionally ascribed to the brilliant Greek bard that authored, most notably, the Iliad and the Odyssey (Western civilization's first complete stories). Nothing concrete is known of his life, but he is traditionally thought to be blind and was probably born in either Chios or ...
26. Jane Austen
Writer | Sense and Sensibility
Jane Austen was born on December 16th, 1775, to the local rector, Rev. George Austen (1731-1805), and Cassandra Leigh (1739-1827). She was the seventh of eight children. She had one older sister, Cassandra. In 1783 she went to Southampton to be taught by a relative, Mrs. Cawley, but was brought ...
27. Frances Hodgson Burnett
Writer | The Secret Garden
Born in Manchester, England on November 24 1849, Frances Eliza Hodgson was the eldest daughter in a family of two boys and three girls. After her father's death when she was three years old, the Hodgsdons experienced severe financial difficulties. As a young girl, she would scrawl little stories on...
28. Johann David Wyss
Writer | Swiss Family Robinson
Johann David Wyss was born on May 28, 1743 in Berne, Switzerland. Johann David was a writer, known for Swiss Family Robinson, Perils of the Wild (1925) and Swiss Family Robinson (1960). Johann David died on January 11, 1830 in Bern, Switzerland.
29. Howard Pyle
Writer | The Black Shield of Falworth
Howard Pyle was born on April 5, 1853 in Wilmington, Delaware, USA. He was a writer, known for The Black Shield of Falworth (1954), World Fairy Tale (1994) and The Adventures of Robin Hood (2018). He died on November 9, 1911 in Florence, Tuscany, Italy.
30. Oscar Wilde
Writer | The Picture of Dorian Gray
A gifted poet, playwright and wit, Oscar Wilde was a phenomenon in 19th-century England. He was illustrious for preaching the importance of style in life and art, and of attacking Victorian narrow-mindedness.
Wilde was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1854. He studied at Trinity College in Dublin before ...
31. Hans Christian Andersen
Writer | Frozen
Andersen experienced an unhappy childhood marked by deep poverty. When he was 14 years old, he left his parents' home and fled alone to Copenhagen. Here the director of the Royal Theater, Jonas Collin, took care of the child and gave him shelter and work. With his help, the young Hans Christian ...
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